Mechanical designs of the cartridge based dispensers have been described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,397,946, U.S. Application Ser. No. 61/887,030 and U.S. application Ser. No. 13/204,407. The corresponding disclosures are fully incorporated herein with these references.
The central issue of a medical dispensing is how to provide a comprehensive adherence to a prescription with the presence of myriad of different pills and individual prescriptions involving different pills and cost of medication dispensing. The term “pill” in this disclosure includes pill, tablet or capsule or any solid state form of pharmaceutical or nutraceutical products. The term “medication” includes pharmaceutical, nutraceutical or cosmeceutical products and also any functional food supplements.
Recently, different types of software or computer applications (apps) have been introduced primarily to remind a patient to take medication per programmed in prescription regimen. These applications rely on self-monitoring of the medication taking. The central limitation of these applications is that they do not communicate with a pill dispensing or where it is, as it requires individual prescription programming into pill dispensing device and medication sorting to synchronize pill dispensing with the application.
Another limitation of current digital medication dispensing is that involved medication storing and dispensing devices rely on a network for mutual communication and, as a result are expensive to install and operate as it involves device individual reprogramming to synchronize with changing medication prescriptions.
Thus, there is a great need to provide a system of medication dispensing where monitoring and control is provided by a single control device with a software application/program, say mHealth App, without a need to reprogramming medication dispensing or storing devices themselves with a change in prescription, patient or medication delivery personal or medication availability at a location. The terms “mHealth App” or “App” incorporated any type of software available on mobile device.